New facts show that the so-called Russia conspiracy was in fact a product of savvy Russians and credulous, willing, and very dishonest Democrat operatives.

This Trump-Russia collusion narrative is looking more and more like an incredibly intelligent mix of publicly available facts wrapped around some damning pieces of knowing slanders and fictions, all of which were then given the imprimatur of verisimilitude by attaching a retired British spy, Christopher Steele’s name to the whole misbegotten mess. None of the damning pieces have been proven, though several key bits have been disproven. Edward Jay Epstein recently opined at Powerline that the Steele Dossier, to the extent it seems to contain actual information from Russian sources, seems to contain Russian curated disinformation at best.

I am rapidly concluding that the Dossier may represent more than Russian meddling. Certainly Russia meddled. That’s what it does. But in this case, it seems to have gotten some help on the home front. There are far too many coincidences, far too many things that don’t make sense, and in several cases, dogs that don’t bark, for me to believe that, within America’s borders, those working on the Steele Dossier assembled it in good faith as honest, genuine investigatory work. It might be, but that is not the direction in which the known undisputed facts point at the moment.

In addition to reading this post, I recommend you read two other things. The first is Victor Davis Hanson’s article, Hillary’s “sure” victory explains most everything. The second is my post briefly explaining FISA and the questions that the FBI and DOJ have yet to answer about abusing FISA in the Trump-Russia matter. Both will help make sense of the events of the past two years and the tale I tell below.

In the coming days, I will also publish a detailed timeline listing all the relevant events and explaining why many of the key ones are problematic. It is very long. Before throwing you into that deep end, this post simplifies the timeline narrative and lets you see most of the major the issues without having to hack your way through the . . . I would say weeds, but it really is a triple-canopy jungle.

This post, relying on the facts set out in my soon-to-be-published timeline, gives you an insight into what was going on in the Hillary campaign. You’ll see that the evolving Trump-Russia narrative dovetailed perfectly with the struggle Hillary’s campaign had to overturn voters’ firm conviction that it was impossible for anyone to be more corrupt than Hillary.

So, with that preamble, let me ask you to step back in time and pretend you’re a top political operative in the DNC Now, close your eyes and make spooky noises as you travel back through slime, time and space. When you open your eyes, you see that the calendar on the wall shows that today is April 30, 2016.

April 30 . . . and your gal, Hillary Clinton, is tapped as a shoe-in for the nomination. And looking at the crowded Republican primary field, you know it’s a hop, skip and a jump from nomination to her walk on a red carpet, showered with a glittering combination of male tear drops and fragments of glass from the broken ceiling, as she heads to her coronation . . . uh, inauguration.

It’s a beautiful vision. But in the meantime, something has gone wrong. Very wrong.

Now, don’t misunderstand — not everything has gone wrong. The DNC is an arm of Clinton, Inc., bought and paid for, and it is doing her bidding. The DNC has stacked the primary deck in her favor and Hillary has virtually all the super-delegates in her bag.

The MSM is on her side and is pushing Donald Trump’s nomination on the theory that he will be her weakest opponent, Donald Trump. The MSM’s work seems to have paid off, as it is becoming ever more apparent that Trump is going to win the Republican nomination. All of that is great . . . but there are still a few irritants preventing you from reveling in the moment.

The main irritant is that Hillary is still on the ropes with the public for the email scandal that was first exposed almost a year ago. And worse, that public — including all those darn Deplorables — will get to vote for President in six months.

These likely voters know that Hillary, while Secretary of State, put tens of thousands of America’s secrets at risk by running them through an unsecured private server, the entire purpose of which was to thwart Congressional investigations and watchdog groups, something itself completely illegal. (This particular irritant, incidentally, if proven can be punished with 20 years in prison and a ban on ever again holding public office – which may explain why Comey didn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole when he exonerated Hillary on 5 July.) The Russians and every other American competitor and enemy, from China to Iran to the fat boy in Pyongyang, may have copies of all her emails during her time as Secretary of State, exposing both her and our nation to blackmail.

The FBI and DOJ are giving the appearance of investigating Hillary’s wrongdoings, but giving her exoneration a veneer of an honest investigation takes time. The FBI needs to interview witnesses and give them immunity. They need time to make side deals to destroy evidence. The grand jury needs . . . whoops, forgot: Unlike virtually every other criminal case the DOJ and FBI investigate, they haven’t bothered to impanel a grand jury. Someone needs to write (and edit) an exoneration statement, so it doesn’t get thrown together carelessly at the last minute, after you’ve heard and discarded the evidence. And all of this is a pain in the ass when you keep getting interrupted by having to do all these check-the-box “key” witness interviews.

And all the while all this is going on, no one trusts Hillary. She can’t shake the scandal, despite her trying out a new excuse – usually laughable, as even you admit – on a weekly basis.

Still worse, Hillary is facing a real primary challenge from Bernie the Red, despite the fact that the super-delegates will ensure he can’t possibly win. Still, he’s seriously hurting m’lady’s “inevitability” narrative, especially because young Democrat voters, those with the stars still in their eyes, are almost as bothered as the Deplorables are by Hillary’s email “issues.”

Finally, to pile on the irritants bedeviling inevitability. you learn that Hillary’s Campaign Chairman, John Podesta, fell for a phishing scam and now Wikileaks has all the DNC’s and Podesta’s emails. Who knows what dirty laundry lies at the bottom of that black hole?

So many problems it makes even the most confident head spin. You shake yourself — time to get back to concentrating on pulling this tired old donkey across the finish line. You decide that what you are going to need is an opponent who makes Hillary look like an angel dressed in shining white robes; one that makes her seem an avatar of ethics and purity in comparison.

Yesterday, regarding Bob Woodward’s openly stated claims that Obama’s White House bullied him and that Obama’s conduct amounts to madness, I made this prediction:

Woodward is very much mistaken if he thinks the current generation of media types will support him in the long run, if he continues to attack Obama. If he doesn’t step back and start to toe the party line, the Obamabots in the media will shred his reputation, blackmail him (if they can), and generally reduce him to Sarah Palinesque pariah status.

Honestly, it wasn’t that impressive a prediction because it falls in the same category as predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow in the east or that water will . . . wait for it . . . flow downhill. Still, to the extent I made a prediction, I’m pleased to report that I was absolutely correct.

Obama “senior advisor” David Plouffe went on Twitter to say that Woodward has become too old to matter. Other current generation reporters, the ones who confuse sycophantic propaganda with old-style investigative reporting, were equally vicious and/or dismissive of this one-time journalism icon.

Though no one’s disputed Woodward’s reporting, the media’s Cult of Obama began pushing back against the Watergate legend even before he dropped the bomb last night that he had been threatened by a top White House official.

But when that news hit, many in media immediately chose to protect Obama by ridiculing Woodward, questioning his motives, and/or dismissing his reporting.

Meet the members of the Cult of Obama…

Politico White House reporter Glenn Thrush:

Wonder if Woodward has humped up his book sales from GOPers, ie Amity Schlaes
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) February 28, 2013

—

BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith:

Wish I could claim credit for this observation by a friend: “In which Bob Woodward shows he too can master the new media landscape”
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) February 28, 2013

The above is just a small sampling of the media push back against once of their own who “went rogue.” You really need to read all of them to understand how quickly a Democrat icon can become Sarah Palin if he is deemed a heretic. (And I use the word “heretic” deliberately, with all its religious connotations, because what we’re seeing here is a religion, with Obama as the God-head.)